I decided to start my own Myth Buster written series. I’m gonna provide you enough information to realize that some of your hardcore belief is WRONG and hopefully help you in some personal grow.
Vaccines cause Autism
Oh boy, this is an ever green. I won’t bother you with the hundreds of scientific studies (that even passed peer-review) published on respectable places that disprove this statement. But rather i’m gonna tell you how this awful rumor started:
All this started exactly in the year 1998 by an English doctor named Andrew Wakefield.
This sub-human made his way on the magazine “Lancet” claiming he found a correlation between vaccinating kids for pathologies like measles, mumps and rubella with getting autism.
Luckily the scientific community was very skeptic and soon disproved Wakefield claims. But that’s not all !
After some investigation came to the light the fact that this sub-human received 435.000 English Pounds (more or less 540 thousands US Dollar) from the lawyers of some parents of the child used in the study for this claim. They had interest in making this connection “vaccine = autism” to be true.
Luckily, justice is served. Lancet remove this article and Wakefield loose his license as Doctor.
Brown Sugar is better then White Sugar
For as much as i’m fun of the line “once you go black you never go back”. This time, when comes to sugar, cannot be applied.
The difference between this 2 kind of sugar is basically this:
While white sugar contains only saccharose (sorry, not sure of this word) the brown contains some residues of molasses (in a concentration that vary from 1 to 5 %, depends by it’s type). The molasses is known to contain various vitamins and minerals.
Don’t start chanting victory yet !
Even tho this “good stuff” are present in it, the amount of sugar we assume (if you are a normal human) are way to low to have some kind of beneficial impact.
So, at the end, brown sugar is not better then white. They are the same.
Drinking 8 glasses of water per day
So, once or twice in our life we always hear someone saying that drinking water is important. No argue there. You always should be hydrated. But what people tend to forget is that our body knows what he needs. Other important information, that you might not be aware of, is that you can get hydrated also eating vegetables, drinking tea, milk, teas, coffee or eating fruits.
So, who the hell decided the 8 glass of water per day ?
This “theory” started to be shared in the 1945 from the Food and Nutrition Board of USA.
And, as today, there is still not any scientific evidence that this theory is valid
Using butter (or other non-conventional stuff) on burns
This thing of applying butter or other stuff has no scientific evidence so far.
Yes, it might give some sort of reliefs but it would last for only few seconds and most of all it can improve the possibility to catch some infection.
So, as far concerning the burns, the ideal things to do are:
– Use fresh water (NOT COLD/ICED)
– Use eventual dedicated cream/ointment
– If is serious (you can see your skin falling off or big huge bubble) GO TO THE HOSPITAL (unless you are american, in that case…sorry for you)
Carrots improve vision
This is one of my favourite myth.
Yes, carrots contains a certain amount of Vitamin A (known to be useful for the eye sight).
But this myth started in the second world war because the Brits wanted to keep secret that they were using radar technology. So they started saying that they were assuming huge amount of carrots because would help them see better (even in the dark).
Now, myth aside, some carotenoids (what give to the carrots and other food their typical yellow/orange color) are good in protecting the “macula” (not sure is the proper english word), The macula is basically the central part of your retina and it’s used by your eyes to put things in proper focus.
Hangover Cures
There are many “home remedy” to cure yourself from a hangover. Many of them very bad for your body. The most common are:
– Drinking Alcohol in the morning
– Greasy Breakfast
So those 2 are making things actually worst.
Alcohol has a diuretic effect (makes you pee a lot) and the only consequence from drinking more in the morning is that will make you more dehydrated.
Plus our liver is working hard in order to expel the ethanol contained in our favourite poison (the word poison is correct cause ethanol litterally intoxicate our liver). So to add more (drinking a bit of alcohol in the morning) won’t help this process.
For good remedy search on google for “valid scientific remedy for hangover”.
Getting Cold (low temp) = Getting Influence/Ill
Even tho colds and flu are common in cold periods i can safely say that “correlation is not causation“.
It’s not the cold (low temperature) per se to make you ill, but rather it’s consequences.
Low temp tend to reduce our normal amount of mucus (important in order to have an effective protection for our respiratory system when comes to various pathogens).
Plus we tend to stay more in closed and environment (with low ventilation).
So all this factors (togheter) tend to create an easy environment for virus and bacteria to be transmitted.
5 Seconds Rules
Everybody encountered this rule and believed it ! (me too….sadly…but hey, i was a weird ass kid).
So, first of all, this is not true. Some food get tainted almost immediately.
Main faactors that contribute to its “infection” are:
– type of surface (on wich the food falls)
– Food humidity
Sugar make childs iperactive
This myth started in the 1974 with a letter from the pediatric doctor William Crook to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Where he pointed out an “eventual” correlation between sugar and child iperactivity.
Just a friendly reminder that a letter is not a scientific study.
Besides, numerous scientific studies has been done in this matter founding no correlation between child and their iperactivity.
Spinach makes you stronger | Spinach have countless amount of steel
As a kid i truly loved Popeye. But let’s get real and find the truth about this myth.
Basically all started in 1890 when some american nutritionists started measuring the level of steel in vegetables.
Apparently there has been a typo during the printing of those numbers (a misplaced comma) that assigend to spinach a level of steel 10x more then it should have. Not funny enough ? Well, the error got discovered after 10 years ! (more or less).
In the meantime Popeye made history.
Margarine and butter
People tend to assume that margarine is more healthier then butter. The reality ?
Well. Both of them have (more or less) the same amount of fat. The difference is that margarine has more unsaturated fats (type of fat that doesnt tend to kill you).
Might sound as bullshit, but actually butter is more natural then margarine (because of how are made). The trick ? DO NOT EXAGGERATE ! (same applies to almost anything).
